


amoris vulnus idem sanat qui facit

by yuuya



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/M, Speculation, spoilers for ep114
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-24 13:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7510787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuya/pseuds/yuuya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, Ruri believed in things like fairytales, believed that someone who loves you couldn't hurt you by choice, believed that stolen kisses and secret shared smiles meant love in the first place.</p>
<p>Now, she's not sure of any of it. Now, she watches her brother standing with people she doesn't know and doesn't know how to know because she's been shut up in a tower like a fairytale princess for so long she isn't sure how to be anything but shut up in a tower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> wow this episode hurt
> 
> and i am in deniruri hell forever and always so, uh, have this i guess
> 
> there will almost certainly be either a second chapter or a follow-up fic with more Actual DeniRuri Content but for now i'm marking this complete so. take it. suffer with me

It's not an all-at-once thing. Far too many of them for that, so it's in little groups, with each group then shuffled off to recover, to wait for their loved ones, to… well. Whatever it is that you do when you've spent the last however-long as a card.

She'd escaped that much, at least, so she doesn't know.

There's some… agreement between them, she gathers, to leave their own closest comrades until everyone else from Heartland and any Academia students who tried to rebel are finished with - selfless, selfish, she can't tell or decide and in the end it doesn't make much difference.

(she thinks they'd take a while to get to the person she's waiting for anyway, so it doesn't really matter what order the people in front come, does it?)

She watches it all, tucked into an alcove above them all where she can see without being seen, or at least without being seen particularly clearly. Once upon a time, she'd have been down there in the thick of it. Once upon a time… once upon a time, Ruri believed in things like fairytales, believed that someone who loves you couldn't hurt you by choice, believed that stolen kisses and secret shared smiles meant love in the first place.

Now, she's not sure of any of it. Now, she watches her brother standing with people she doesn't know and doesn't know _how_ to know because she's been shut up in a tower like a fairytale princess for so long she isn't sure how to be anything _but_ shut up in a tower.

Fairytales would be more accurate, she thinks, if the princesses stayed in their towers with the doors unlocked, too afraid to step out into the unpredictable world beyond the predictable walls.

So Ruri watches. She watches, and waits, and when all the others are returned to themselves he's still-- well. It's that Yusho is nowhere to be found, apparently, Yusho who still has his card and has had it the entire time it's been a card - and there's a jealousy there, Ruri finds, never mind that that's about twenty different shades of ridiculous. Yusho who is… who is predictable, in the right circumstances, except that nobody else _knows_ it's the right circumstances, and so…

She sighs, and pulls herself from her alcove, and slips away before she can be seen.

Yusho is, as she'd expected, in her tower. Sitting on her chair, looking out of her window, and it occurs to her as she steps through the doorway into the room that this place feels like _home_ now more than the idea of some burnt-out shell of Heartland City. This place has been her _everything_ for-- for a long time, now, and it feels safer in here than out there in the unknown.

She doesn't realise at first that Yusho has turned to look at her; not until he says, softly, "I thought you'd want to be the one."

She looks back at him, at that, and he's holding out one of the portable de-carding devices - he must have slipped it away at the very start, she thinks, to have gone unnoticed - and-- and _that_ card, the one she'd been waiting for all the time that she'd been tucked up in that alcove. The one she'd been waiting for longer than that, if she's honest with herself.

(there had been a time, early on, where she'd waited for someone to ride in and rescue her from the tower, and sometimes she'd imagined her brother but sometimes she'd imagined _him_ , until she'd made the mistake of mentioning his name in front of Yuuri and Yuuri had _laughed_ , had laughed and laughed until he was breathless and then told her everything that _he_ really was)

( _ **he** certainly isn't going to be your knight in shining armor_ , he'd laughed, and after that she'd stopped imagining anyone coming to save her)

It takes her a moment to realise she's gotten distracted, and when she comes back to herself Yusho is still there, still holding out the device and the card and watching her expectantly. All she can manage is to nod and take them from him, and then she just ends up standing there holding them, feeling about as lost as she ever has.

"I'll give you some privacy," Yusho says then, pulling himself up, and all she can manage is another nod.

And then she's alone with the device, with the card, and she… she doesn't know what to do with it. So she shuts the door and pushes the chair under the handle - no locks for her, at least not on the inside - and then just… sits on the bed with the device and the card next to her.

She's waiting, maybe, though she's not sure what. Waiting to know what to say, what to do, to know what she wants to say to him, what she wants to do to him, what she thinks of him at all. But… that could take a while, she thinks, could take forever, probably, so it's…

Rip the band-aid, she thinks, and activates the device.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well crap now i have no idea where i'm going with this or how many chapters it's going to have? stay tuned kids

Dennis takes a while to really come to, once he's himself again. And, oh, she'd known that would be the case - how could she not, after watching the carded coming back to themselves all day? - but it still itches in her skin, the waiting for him to be functional. Because the longer she has to wait, the more time there is to dwell on the fact that she still doesn't know what to say, to do, to think, to--

He opens his eyes.

( _oh_ , she thinks, more aware than ever now that no amount of time would have been enough to prepare for this)

"Ah," is the first thing he says, once he's managed to lift his head enough to see her. Less eloquent than she remembers him.

Ruri makes a noncommittal noise of her own in return, pulls her legs up onto the bed and hugs her knees to her chest. It's all she knows how to do right now. What's she supposed to say, at a time like this?

He lied to her, betrayed her; this she knows. And yet she remembers stolen kisses and letting him in through her window when Shun was asleep, remembers his hands and his lips on her skin.

He brought Academia to their door; this she knows. And yet she remembers flowers and trinkets and pretty stones left in a hollow of the trunk of the tree outside her window, remembers how beautiful he'd looked when his smile had finally started to reach his eyes.

He chose to try to end his life rather than face what he'd done; this she knows. And yet she remembers that he'd been the one to tell the others where her and Rin were.

(and yet she remembers the way she'd wished for him to come and save her, back before she'd known he was the reason she'd been brought here in the first place)

She lifts her head slightly, to look at him; he's made it to sitting now, sat on the floor of her tower room and watching her with a guarded look about him. He doesn't know what to expect, she thinks, doesn't know what she'll do or say or why he's alone with only her.

Well. That makes two of them.

"I used to hope you'd come," she says in a voice that hardly sounds like her own, soft and wondering and surprising even herself. "Even after I knew what you'd done. What you were. I used to think that if you were Academia, surely that meant you could visit me here, like he did."

(she's never admitted that to anyone before; hardly even to herself)

Dennis sucks in a breath, at that. Opens his mouth to speak and then just nods without meeting her eyes. She almost pities him. Almost wants to tell him that she'd known, really, that he couldn't; Yuuri had told her that, too, along with the fact that _he_ wasn't really _supposed_ to visit her.

She wants it enough that she opens her mouth to say it. But what comes out instead is, "Was it real? Any of it?"

He sucks in another breath; sharper than the last, more pained. He looks at her face and the look on _his_ face is like he's trying to swallow glass. And all the while Ruri is just watching him, her knees hugged to her chest like they're the only thing holding her down.

She feels disconnected from it all, but she's pretty sure however he answers her question, the answer will change that.

"Yes," he says eventually, soft and hesitant. He's watching her back again now with that same guarded look from before, like he's expecting a blow of some kind.

"How?" It's all she can manage. _How_ was it real, _how_ did he feel the way he claimed to and yet-- and yet--

"It was… separate." He stops there, wetting his lips with his tongue - he'd always done that when he was nervous, Ruri remembers, and wonders if it was real or affected, if it's real or affected now - and swallowing tightly. "There was… the me who belonged to Academia, and the me who belonged to… you, and… they were separate. It was… easy to keep them separate."

His lips curve into a smile and it's the kind she remembers from the _beginning_ , the kind that's sad and shaking and doesn't reach his eyes.

"It was always supposed to be an act, you know? The part of me that _you_ saw. But then, so was the Academia soldier, really, in the end… there wasn't really a part that _wasn't_." Another pause, another wetting of his lips.

"So maybe 'yes, it was real' is wrong," he goes on after a moment, looking so lost in himself now that Ruri's heart twists and _aches_ at the sight. "I'm not… entirely sure what _real_ is, where I'm concerned."

And Ruri - Ruri who is remembered as someone bright and happy and hopeful, Ruri who'd smiled on through it all, Ruri who has spent so long locked up in this tower that she's terrified of the world outside, Ruri who is sure her smiles now must be as watery and unconvincing as any of Dennis'... Ruri can relate to that. To not knowing what's real, to not knowing whether the _you_ in your own mind or the _you_ in someone else's mind or perhaps no version of you at all is real.

(Dennis might understand her now better than she can even understand herself, and even after everything he's done she thinks he's the person she most _wants_ to know her in that way, even before Shun, before Yuuto)

"Shit," she whispers, more to herself than to him.

( _I still love him_ , she thinks)

( _I never stopped_ , she thinks next)


End file.
